


Crayola Skies For A Thousand Miles

by evilythedwarf



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Single Parent/School Teacher, Brienne is the Best, Cool Uncle Tyrion, Dead Cersei Lannister, F/M, Family Issues, Friends to Lovers, Half-Sibling Incest, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Underage, Relationship Issues, School Teacher Brienne of Tarth, Single Dad Jaime Lannister, Tyrion Lannister Ships It, Tywin Lannister is just the worst, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilythedwarf/pseuds/evilythedwarf
Summary: His eyes are a lovely, like the rest of him, and while he does look her up and down, he’s not unkind.“Jaime Lannister,” he says. “And you’re Miss Brienne, I presume?”





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened. I saw a thing on tumblr a while back, and let's just say I needed some loveliness for these two after the GoT finale. There might be more tags added later but for now please heed the warnings. Also, the rating might change eventually, depending of where this goes. This hasn't been beta'd because I was afraid I might chicken out if I didn't get it out right now.

As a teacher, you’re not supposed to have favourites, you’re supposed to care for all your children equally. But what nobody tells you when you start teaching is that some children you love just a little bit more. Some children need you a little bit more.

Tommen was tall for his age, and quiet, and his lovely green eyes were too big for his face. And every morning he walked into Brienne’s pre-k classroom, climbed into her lap and hugged her for the longest time. Then he quietly sat down on the red table and worked on puzzle after puzzle until the other children started to drift in.

He never talked in class unless someone directly asked him something, and while he was so clearly smart (he had great problem solving skills), he was behind on his fine motor skills, phonological awareness and three weeks before the end of the school year he still couldn’t write his name. And she never once met his parents, or any member of his family except for the older sister who sometimes accompanied the nanny to pick him up after school. She tried to schedule a meeting with his mother, but her personal assistant showed up instead, and when the school psychologist tried, the same thing happened. And there was no father listed on her class directory.

He didn’t come to school on a Wednesday, and that wasn't particularly worrying, or even all that noticeable until someone was actually looking for him, because he was easy going and polite, not a troublemaker, or in need of much attention and there were 11 other kids in class who more than made up for his absence.

And then it was Thursday, and he was absent again.

Friday, and still no Tommen.

On Monday, just two weeks shy of the end of year ceremony, the nurse called his home number, and then his mother’s cell phone when no one picked up, and there was no answer.

Brienne talked to his sister’s teacher – his sister who had a different last name but the same lovely green eyes; Myrcella had been absent as well, and there was no response from her home either. The school’s administration tried to contact them as well, but nothing.

She worried, and she felt it keenly every day when 7:30 hit and there was no little boy running into her classroom and climbing into her lap for a hug, but it was the end of the year, and there were assessments to complete and the school play to organize and while the kids in her class missed their friend and Brienne missed him as well, there was not much she could do about it.

And then someone called the school, or sent a letter, or maybe even showed up to talk to the principal, but news came that there was a family situation and the children would not be returning for the remainder of the year. Or maybe even the next year.

Summer passed by too quickly, in between going back home to Tarth to visit her dad (and trying not to let being home again get to her and remind her of all the reasons why she left), and moving apartments because the lease on the place she lived in since university was up and she could actually afford a nicer place now. She's still settling into her new place when she goes back to work, a month before summer ends, and so she doesn’t have a lot of time to think about what might have happened to that sweet little boy with the amazing hugs.

And then, just like that, it’s time to start the school year again. She’s been moved to kindergarten for the year, and this is only her second year teaching, so it’s not like she was used to pre-k or anything, but it’s a tough year for the kids, and for the teachers as well, getting them ready for first grade and reading and writing, and so many other things. Brienne is not in it for the money (which is frankly not great), she teaches because she loves kids, and she wants to see them grow into good people, so she stresses over every little thing.

She’s glad to see Tommen Lannister on her class roster but she can’t give it a lot of mental space except for making sure he’s one of the first kids she meets the school psychologist about because she wants him, and all her kids, to be given the tools they need to succeed.

Pia, her class aid, has been amazing at making sure the classroom is ready for the first day of school, and looking amazing and as neat and organized as it’s ever going to be, especially after the kids start getting into everything.

It’s the first day, and being a school of the Seven, that mostly means about a half-hour on the classroom with the children and their over anxious parents, before everybody moves to the Sept for a small service and then they all go home and she can change out of the ill fitting grey pantsuit that’s the official school uniform for teachers and makes her feel more awkward than she normally does. The real work begins tomorrow, when the kids will stay in school for a half day, but that’s when most issues pop up.

She knows all the old students. Either she taught them herself last year, or they were in Margaery’s clas and she’s heard extensively about each of them, so she’s well aware of what she’s in for with them. The new students though, she knows next to nothing about.

She’s distractedly waiting by the door of her classroom for all the kids to get there when she sees Tommen. The boy runs toward her all the way from the front entrance and wraps his arms around her legs.

“Hello there,” she tells him, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve missed you!”

She’s said that to all the kids so far, because it’s true, but she maybe means it a little bit more for him. She takes his hand and looks around to try to find his nanny, but there’s no one like that around. Instead there’s a man, maybe the most beautiful man she’s ever seen, walking their way looking both anxious and relieved as he kneels in front of the little boy and locks eyes with him.

“You can’t just run away like that Tommen,” he tells him, not harshly.

“Sorry,” the boy says. He pulls at Brienne’s hand as he gets closer to the man and then grabs his hand as well.

He stands up, this lovely lovely man, and they all stand under the doorway somewhat awkwardly until she clears her throat and he pays attention to her for the first time.

His eyes are a lovely, like the rest of him, and while he does look her up and down, he’s not unkind.

“Jaime Lannister,” he says. “And you’re Miss Brienne, I presume?”

She nods, and thinks of something to say. She’s no longer 16 year old and blushing the minute she has to talk to a man, but he’s so damn attractive, and she’s always felt somewhat lacking when she has to interact with someone like him. She feels her cheeks flush and regrets forgoing make up this morning.

“Nice to meet you,” she says. “Are you Tommen’s…?” she leaves the question open ended, because she doesn’t want to assume, but it’s obvious they’re related, with the same green eyes and golden hair, and the same bright smile.

His dimples are showing when he answers.

“I’m his dad,” he says proudly, and he ruffles the boy’s hair.

Someone calls for Tommen from inside the classroom, a friend from last year probably, and the boy lets go of her hand, finally and walks inside, pulling his father behind him.


	2. 2

Jaime is tired all the time.

This was his dream, more or less, for a long time. And now he’s bordering on collapse because he just can’t handle everything that needs to be done all the time to keep these kids of his alive.

Part of him feels like this is what he was meant to do all along, take care of them, love them, feed them and cart them around from activity to activity, but a bigger part of him knows that he wasn’t meant to do it alone.}

Cersei was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a bad mother. She loved her children more than anything in the world, and she tried, right up till the very end, to keep them children. Of course when her illness got out of hand, and she was no longer able to be the mother she wanted to be, it fell to him to pick up the pieces and try to get them to live in the real world. And he’s still picking up the pieces three months after she’s gone.

Tommen is a little ghost who barely ever talks to him, or to anyone, and Myrcella talks all day and says pretty much nothing. She cries herself to sleep every night and Jaime doesn’t know what to do about it, or about the almost chronic loneliness that envelops these two kids who are so little, so fragile, and so damn stubborn.

His day starts around 6 when he wakes up, invariably, to find Tommen is already up and about, leaving his toys everywhere and walking around the house in pajamas. Jaime tries to feed him breakfast but he still doesn’t know what the boy actually likes to eat, and he refuses to do for Tommen what was done for him when he was a child and force him to eat what is presented or not eat at all.

And then there’s Myrcella, who refuses to get out of bed before ten, who would sleep all day if she was allowed (and wouldn’t that be so much easier? Just letting her be and not have to worry about how depressed she seems for someone so little). She calls him Jaime, still, and he’s not going to go against that, but she’s his, even if he wasn’t allowed to give her his last name and he has to do right by her.

He takes them to swimming lessons, and riding lessons, and music lessons, and he’s surprised to hear nothing but good things from all their instructors, even though the children they describe are nothing like the ones he lives with, because as soon as they get home (for a measure of the word, they’re cramped and uncomfortable in the small apartment he managed to get, and he can’t go back to the house he never got to share with Cersei).

He loves them, more than anything, and he needs them to be alright. He’s so intensely focused on them that he can almost forget that nothing in his life makes sense, and he’s barely holding it together so how is he supposed to get his kids to thrive when they’re all just living one day to the next. If only he could figure out how to fix everything.

And now there’s school, too, which he wouldn’t really have thought about unless Tyrion of all people had asked him about it. Tyrion, who insists he needs a maid and a nanny and a bigger apartment. Tyrion, who thinks he needs more help than he’s getting and who’s probably right about all of it.

What even is he doing here? Who thought he should be put in charge of anything, let alone actual living people. He could have done it, once upon a time, he wanted to do it, when they were just potential children he and Cersei might have someday, when they were just two people who loved each other, who lived for each other, who were fucking meant to be, if everything they’d felt and lived since they were infants was true.

Except it wasn’t. True, that is.

They didn’t know, and when they actually knew, when Cersei got ill the first time around, with the tests and the genetists and the answers, it all fell apart.

Cersei couldn’t deal with it, and Jaime couldn’t deal with it, and he left, or she made him leave, he was gone, is the thing. He was gone and he didn’t come back until she called him from the hospital 2 months ago, because of the children.

The children who have no one else in the world but him, now.

Myrcella, who’s not legally his, who barley even remembered him, who looks exactly like her mother did at her age. Ten years old but so damn sweet, and so easy to hurt, and such a little girl, the way Cersei never was. She likes dolls and horses and getting her hair done. And Jaime doesn’t know what to do with her. Doesn’t know how to tell her that she is everything to him and have her believe him. 

Tommen, who hasn’t asked him for a single thing since he’s been with Jaime. Who colours, and plays with his legos, and takes disinterested looks at the food Jaime makes for him and can go days without speaking a word.

Tommen and Myrcella, in their brand new school uniforms, looking nervous because what is everyone going to say now? Myrcella specially, didn’t want him to talk to her teacher, but sending her in without telling anyone, that was a cruelty he was not going to inflict on upon her.

He’s talked to the teacher, a lovely young woman who looks at him with pity and tenderness and something else that makes him uncomfortable enough that he’s more than willing to leave his daughter in her classroom and take Tommen’s hand tightly in his.

They have to cross the street to get to the pre-school section of the school. He doesn’t know why Cersei picked this place, they weren’t raised in the Seven, and he’s fairly certain that the Septon in charge would have words for them if their family situation was ever made public, but it seems a nice enough place, and he sees enough familiar faces that he knows it’s exactly the kind of school their sort of people go to. (When they’re not being shipped to boarding schools clear across the country like they all were, that is.)

He acts confident even though he’s not, as he walks his son to his first day of kindergarten. Tommen is looking more alive than he normally does, and for a minute Jaime feels like maybe he can do this. For a minute, he thinks that things are looking up. He got the kids to school, they’re both relatively happy for the first time since he’s got them, he’s about to pull this off.

And then Tommen lets go of his hand and runs off, and Jaime is once again lost.

Until he sees his boy wrapped around quite possibly the tallest woman he has ever seen, who also looks entirely too young to be in charge of so many little kids in general, and his own specifically. Plain and too tall, with rough features but the most amazing pair of blue eyes that lit up when she saw his son. She looks kind and Jaime almost wants to bask in it for a moment. Kindness is not so easy to come by.

He talks to Tommen about not running away again, and he looks chastised but not sad when he scampers inside to join the friends Jaime had no idea the boy had missed so much, pulling him along with him. Tommen lets go of his father’s hand and throws himself into playing with the other children, and Jaime thinks it’s the only time he’s got to talk to the teacher. Poor planning skills on his part but the whole school thing snuck up on him and he didn’t have time to think things through. He stands, maybe a little straighter than necessary because she is so tall, this girl, and goes to talk to her.

(He introduced himself as Tommen’s dad, and he’s proud of it, proud of himself, for a little bit.)

“Do you think I could talk to you for a second?” he asks, knowing it will take longer, but not wanting to have this conversation out in the open.

She looks at him, like she wants to tell him no, and she’s about to speak when she0s interrupted buy gleeful shrieks coming from inside the classroom, where Tommen is running around with his friends.

“That’s the happiest I’ve seen him in months,” Jaime says, half to himself, half to verbalise the word happy in association to his son.

She bites her lips and nods towards the small playroom that’s next to the classroom. Inside there’s puzzles and building blocks and small little tables with small little chairs, and he sits down while he waits for her, grabs a forgotten block an starts turning it over in his hands until she comes inside and closes the door behindher.

“Sorry, I had to let my class aid know i was stepping out for a moment.”

She sits down in front of him, looking far too at ease in the small furniture.

“Mr. Lannister,” she starts, but he’s quick to interrupt.

“I’m Jaime. Please.”

“Mr. Jaime,” she tries to continue, and she doesn’t look at him properly, staring at the blue lock he’s still playing with.

“His mother died,” Jaime says. “3 months ago, almost.” He doesn’t know how to get to it without being direct, and he’s not trying to make things awkward, but he needs her to know, for Tommen’s sake. He doesn’t know if she knows what to do with a little boy who just lost his mother, but he needs the help, Tyrion was right, and maybe this is a good place to start.

“Oh,” she whispers. “I’m very sorry,” she tells him, and she looks it, genuinely sorry but not pitying, looking straight t him, now, with eyes that tell him she knows grief, with eyes that tell him that maybe he’s entitled to grieve.

He can’t answer, for a second. He’s speechless and frozen, because he hadn’t thought, until know, that Cersei went and died on him too. This girl knows nothing of them, nothing of the hurt and the anger and the family issues that go years and years back. All she knows is that Cersei is dead, and she’s telling him she’s sorry, and maybe Jaime hasn’t until right now, let himself believe it happened to him too.

She lowers her eyes, and sighs audibly, and then she stands up, far more gracefully than anyone should from this ridiculous small plastic chairs.

“We’ll leave for the Sept in fifteen minutes,” she says. “You can stay here, if you want, for a bit. I’ll keep an eye on Tommen.”

“Yeah, okay. Yes.”

She leaves the room, and he stays there, with a blue block on his hands, trying to figure out how he’s going to keep going forward until he hears laughter coming from outside the room, and he follows it back to the classroom where a group of kids are sitting on the floor playing with wooden race cars. Tommen looks up at him with a smile and waves, and Jaime feels the weight on his shoulders ease.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the delay in this, but I've been really sick and I'm only know getting better. It's hard to write when you can't even breathe properly. Anyway, here they go, these two idiots who are.... not yet in love, actually. But we're getting there. Would love it if you reviewed!

He’s hard to forget, Jaime Lannister.

Not that she has a chance to, as she sees him every morning, dropping off his son at school. He parks in across the street front of the school, early, but unlike other parents who would drop their kids off at 5 am if only someone opened the door for them, he and Tommen play in the park that surrounds the Sept for a little while, until 7:30 on the dot (which is the actual time of entry) when he walks Tommen to the pre-school’s door, and then he stays at the door until he sees the little boy reaches his classroom.

Brienne has the early morning shift at the school’s entrance, mainly because she’s always early anyway and nobody else wants it. Of course that means she doesn’t have to be there at pick-up, and she technically doesn’t have to watch over the kids during recess (though she does anyway, because they’re her students, and her responsibility, and she actually likes kids, unlike some teachers).

So maybe he’s not hard to forget, as much as he’s hard to get out of her mind.

But he smiles at her, every single morning.

He smiles at her like she imagines he’d smile at a beautiful girl in the park, and she can’t deal with it.

Brienne is not stupid, and she settled into her looks a long time ago. She knows she’s too tall and too broad, and too freckled. But she also knows that the scars of her adolescence sometimes (often) blind her to the reality that thanks to the miracles of orthodontics and hair products she’s... fine. She looks fine. She’s not pretty and she’s never going to be, but she’s interesting, and smart, and she tries to be kind. There are many good things about her that make her worth knowing. Worth dating even, once a guy gets to know her a little.

But he smiles at her like she’s seen so many men smile at Margaery, and she doesn’t know what to do with that. She’s almost convinced herself that he’s mocking her, except that she sees how sweet he is with his son (and she still, after everything, wants to believe people are _good_ ).

And she’s found out so many things about him. Things she needed to know, for Tommen, and she doesn’t know what to do with that either. While he is technically a widower, he’d been living in Essos since shortly after Tommen was born, which explains why no one had ever seen him at the school before this year.

Also, he’s one of _those_ Lannister, she’s been informed by Margaery, the filthy rich ones, and his wife had been a Lannister as well, one that had been previously married to Robert Baratheon, the poor thing. Brienne’s met him a few times, through Renley, and she doesn’t exactly hold him in high regard. Margaery knows an unnecessary amount of details about the whole thing, and Brienne oscillates between wanting to know, and wanting to respect that poor family’s privacy, so it’s been 2 weeks since she’s sat down to chat with Marg, to avoid making a decision.

Brienne concentrates on school, on the kids, on keeping the insane amounts of paper work the schools requires of all the teachers up to date. She decorates her new apartment, slowly, and volunteers at King’s Landing’s Children hospital, now she lives closer to it. She feels her days fairly well, and by the time she goes to bed she almost never thinks about Jaime Lannister, and by the time she wakes up in the morning she almost forgets that it’s a problem, his smile.

Except then it’s the morning again, and she gets to school and the minute the doorman opens the double doors to the pre-school she see him across the street and she starts thinking about him again. It’s distracting and highly inappropriate, considering she’s her son’s teacher, but he’s so damn lovely to look at.

And he’s extra lovely this morning.

Usually he shows up in a suit and tie, even under the still unforgiving sun of autumn. Well dressed and with perfect hair.

This morning though, he’s wearing jeans and a green t-shirt that’s slightly too tight across his shoulders, and reveals a mess of scars all around his right forearm. He lingers, after Tommen has disappeared from view. He stands there looking inside the school, occasionally looking at her, and it creates a distraction among the other parents. Among a very specific subset of parents, rather.

She avoids his eyes, and tries to look the other way as the doorman closes the door, and she’s about to turn around and head back inside when he calls her name.

“Ms. Brienne?”

Even his voice is beautiful.

She takes a deep breath and turns to face him.

“Can I help you?”

She doesn’t mean to be short with him, but she’s irrationally nervous, and she offers him a small smile in compensation.

He looks over his shoulder before speaking, at the cluster of women about 3 meters away.

“I wondered if I could talk to you? About Tommen?”

She looks down at her watch and bites her lower lip. She really only has a few minutes before she needs to be at her classroom, and usually this is when she grabs a quick coffee to fortify herself against the day, but she also wants to see where he stands on a few issues.

“Alright,” she says. “But I only have a couple of minutes.”

She leads him inside the school, to one of the smaller interview rooms, and sits in front of him.

“Mr. Lannister,” she starts, but he quickly corrects her.

“Jaime, please.”

“Mr. Jaime,” she starts again, “tell me. About Tommen?”

He grins, and she’s reminded of their first almost identical conversation.

“Is he... is he settling in ok?”

“He’s doing great, actually,” she says. She feels bad for even thinking it but he’s doing so much better this year than last, and she can’t help but think that maybe he needed some parental involvement. So far this year she’s seen more of Tommen’s dad than she ever did his mother. “It’s only been a couple of weeks, but Tommen has really blossomed this year. He’s still shy, but he’s interacting with the other children more, and he’s participating in class, not only when called upon.”

He nods, listening attentively, looking straight at her. 

She bites her lip again, because this is the tough part. She hesitates to speak and considers organizing an official progress meeting, but decides that if he’s asking she might as well tell him.

“His fine motor skills are quite what they should be for kindergarten,” she tells him, and looks for his reaction.

“How can I help?” he asks immediately, which is precisely the right answer, so she sighs, relieved.

“We’re going to continue working at it here, but there’s some things you can do at home that will help.”

He looks at the table for a second.

“Hold on, can you, would you wait a second? I need to write this down somewhere.” He takes out his phone and opens what she guesses is a note taking app.

“It’s fine, I can send you all the information later. There’s already been improvement over last year, so I’m not overly concerned about it. However,” she hesitates again. Looking at her watch, she realizes she’s already way past the few minutes she agreed to, but it seems cruel to stop now, and he seems receptive. Pia can handle the kids for a little bit more.

“Mr.- uh, Jaime, are you aware Tommen can’t write his name?”

His lips press together, and he sets the phone on the table.

“His vocabulary isn’t what we’d like either, and he has difficulty pronouncing certain words.”

He’s nodding along to what she’s saying and he looks concerned rather than angry, so at least there’s that. And she hasn’t even gotten to the other things, like his phonological awareness or his failure at following multi-step directions.

“Look, it might all be maturity. He’s the youngest in class and it might just take him a little while to catch up with the rest, but I’d like to ask the school psychologist to observe him.”

He nods again, and while it was strange before, being the centre of his attention, it’s even stranger now, when he’s avoiding her eyes.

“Mr. Jaime, he’s really doing well. And he’s still just 4, if there are any issues, there’s never going to be a better time to find out.”

He shakes his head, and still looks everywhere but at her.

“Dyslexia, that’s genetic, right?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper.

“Oh.” Oh, she feels for him, suddenly. “That might not, he’s too little to tell. And even if it does end up being that, it's not, there are resources and...”

He still looks subdued.

“How about I set things up with the psychologist and we go from there?”

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, slowly raising his head.

She can’t help but smile at him, and wanting to erase the worry from his face.

“He’s going to be okay,” she tells him.

He sighs.

“I’m sorry. About, I’m sorry for ambushing you like that, at the door. But, I, uh, have some time off this week. We’re moving and I’m taking some time off to set things up at the new house.”

“It’s fine.”

"And I really just wanted to know how he's doing."

He stands up and so does she. He’s tall. Somehow, she hadn’t noticed that before, he’s almost as tall as she is. He seems to have gathered himself because he’s smiling again.

“Can you give me a phone number or-”

“I can’t,” she interrupts him.

“Right, of course, I’m sorry for asking.”

“No, I mean, it’s school policy. I can’t share my private contact information with parents.”

“I see.”

“But if you need anything,” she fumbles in her jeans pocket for her card, but of course she isn’t carrying one right now. “I’ll send you my school email today with Tommen, how about that?”

“Yeah, that’ll work.”

“It’s nothing,” she dismisses as she moves to open the door.

His left hand wraps around her wrist for less than a second, but it’s enough to stop her on her tracks.

“It’s not nothing he says. Thank you.”

She nods, and follows him as he leaves the room. He finds his way out by himself, but turns around as he’s about to leave out the double doors and smiles at her again and she can’t help but smile back.

Beauty is not a measure of worth, she knows that better than most, and she doesn’t precisely like the part of her brain that’s telling her that he’s so beautiful it hurts, but he’s also good. He seems good, at least, and that’s something she finds infinitely more attractive.

She walks, fast, back to her classroom, but she’s interrupted by Margaery who seems to be waiting for her at the door of her class and how does she even know?

“How was your meeting with Hot Daddy?” she asks, and bursts out laughing at the way Brienne’s cheeks redden.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, it took me forever to get here but I'm finally getting back on track!

They’re doing better, all of them.

School seems to have stabilised the kids in a way none of his attempts at normalcy could and they’ve finally moved into a new place so they’re no longer on top of each other all the time. The fact Tommen and Myrcella don’t have to share a room anymore has greatly reduced the amount of screaming between the siblings. Not that ever let them see fighting, no. They kept their discussions private and were only exceedingly civil in front of him, which was more worrying than anything. Cersei sure did love these children, and she wasn’t a bad mother, but a few months into raising them himself, he’s realised she wasn’t exactly a good mother either.

Myrcella ordered her room painted green, and Tommen wanted red, and Jaime let them do whatever they wanted, focusing on them and not his depressingly empty bedroom, with the king-sized bed, the bare walls and way too much closet space for even him to fill completely.

They’ve had friends over, both of them, and they’re eating most of what he puts in front of them. Which took... effort.

Tommen, it turns out is allergic to everything but air, which Jaime didn’t even find out until he sent the boy to school with quail eggs on his lunchbox (exhausted and way too creative after said lunch box had come back completely full way too many times) and his teacher had to call him. Since Tommen was allergic to chicken eggs, was it safe for him to eat quail eggs?

Which prompted a visit to the paediatrician and to the allergist, and a grocery store to replace... almost everything on his fridge.

“You might have told me,” he said on the drive back from the grocery store.

Tommen was quietly drinking a soymilk blueberry shake and making a mess of his shirt and hands and Myrcella rolled her eyes at him.

They’re doing better, but there’s still a lot to figure out. For him and the kids.

And then there’s work, and that’s very complicated.

He left Cersei, almost five years.

(She made him leave, she pushed and she pushed until he couldn’t stand it anymore, and she erased any trace of him in her life, and she begged him not to come back. It hurt too much to look at him, she said, and he was too stupid and confused to fight her on it.)

He left his kids.

(Myrcella who was just beginning to be a person at 5 years old, giggly and fat cheeked and so damn stubborn even then, but he barely had time to know her before everything went down. Tommen, who was just a few days old the last time Jaime held him.)

And he also left the company.

He hated it there, had never wanted to be a part of something so big and intricate and powerful. His family owns half of King’s Landing, or close enough, and there is nowhere he can work that doesn’t have some sort of connection to the family business. Some sort of connection to his father. His father who is not just a terrible parent, but a horrible human being. His father who lied and hid the truth until it was impossible for anyone to walk out unscathed from the mess he had made of all their lives.

Jaime has some money.

Family money that came straight from LannisCorp when he turned 18, and it’s enough to live on. He has money from his mother’s branch of the family, which he got at 21 and has not even touched. And he had a good job in Essos, one that he actually drew satisfaction from and where he made enough that they can live comfortably for a while, so he doesn’t need to work, technically. But he’s also aware of his own shortcomings, and while he grew up with an absent father who dedicated his life to work at the expense of everything else, he also doesn’t want his children to think that they can coast through life without making an effort.

Tyrion talked him into it, and so he got a job he only hates a little, in a company that he hates a lot, and he’s one of those corporate types now, wearing a suit everyday and feeling his tie is choking the life out of him.

And still, he’s maybe never been happier in his life.

He has his children, and it’s not all fun, all the time, like he thought it was going to be years ago when the idea of a family first took form, and he questions every single decision he makes, and Tyrion’s had to talk him off the ledge more than once so far, when he thinks he’s completely failing at everything, but most of all, he feels that for the first time, he can stop dreaming about the life he wants, and live it.

He finally gets to live.

He doesn’t miss Cersei, not really. Not the woman who pushed him away only to pull him back in, on and on for most of his life, the woman he loved since he knew what love was.

Five years was a long time, but it was just enough that he learned how to be without her, and it was enough to realize that he didn’t need her. He was a whole person, all by himself. Not a perfect person, but not the incomplete being he thought he’d be without her.

(He still sometimes wishes for Cersei from when they were kids, when she was his friend and sibling and parent, when she was everything to him and he was everything to her. Cersei from before, the girl he’s convinced existed, once upon a time.)

And he’s so busy all the time, with the kids and their million activities. He thought he was done with all of that once they started school, but Myrcella has volleyball at school 3 times a week, on top of violin twice a week and horseback riding lessons on Saturdays. He’s exhausted just driving her to all those places, but she seems to enjoy it too much for him to protest.

And Tommen. Tommen is a challenge to keep up with.

Jaime remembers hating school, as a child. At first because it was all so difficult all the time, and it only got harder the further he went. Then, when his father decided sending him and Cersei to boarding schools at opposite sides of the country was the best idea ever, Jaime started getting help with his learning issues and was moderately successful in his schooling, but was miserable because he missed Cersei terribly. He never enjoyed it, is the thing. He doesn’t remember a single day that he woke up happy at the prospect of another day of school.

Tommen though, he loves it. He’s so happy every time Jaime drops him off, and so happy every day when he picks him up. Had Jaime had a teacher like his though, maybe he would have enjoyed school a whole lot more.

Brienne Tarth is.... something else. She is extremely polite and unbearably kind and he knows nothing about her except that she’s unusual looking and his son loves her to the moon and back. And she looks all sorts of amazing in a pair of jeans.

He’s had dreams about those legs of hers, and has more than a little trouble not staring into those impossibly blue eyes whenever he has to talk to her. Increasingly often, as it turns out.

He took Tommen to the psychologist. Then the neurologist, and now he goes to a learning specialist 3 times a week, which is supposed to help. Jaime really hopes this eases the way for Tommen, that getting help this early is going to make it easier for him in the long run.

His teacher, Brienne Tarth, agrees. They’ve had several meeting to talk about how Tommen is doing in school, and to inform her and the school psychologist, an entirely forgettable fellow named Pierre, or Peter or something, about what the therapist have told him.

And every time he tries to find out more about her. She’s intriguing in that she seems to not want to share even the tiniest detail about her personal life with him. He is self aware enough to know that he’s attractive, and that the continuous interest women seem to have in him is only due to his looks, and his name, and the charming personality he is somewhat never able to display when he’s around Brienne Tarth.

Something about her renders him unable to be as articulate as he knows he can be, or as charming as he usually is when dealing with things that make him uncomfortable.

Maybe it’s the fact she’s responsible for his son, 6 hours a day, and he’s had to let go of his pride in order to give her the information she needs so that his kid can get to a point where Jaime isn’t laying awake at night afraid he’s going to fail kindergarten.

It’s just getting increasingly more difficult to act like a normal human being around her.

Maybe it’s the eyes. Her eyes that are gorgeous and kind and so incredibly honest, that he can’t help but want to bare his soul to her, and he’s so far said way more than he ever intended to her, shown way more of himself that he’s comfortable with.

And now he’s committed to spending a whole entire day with her, and he doesn’t know if he’s going to finally find out more about her than her name and that she has the patient of the Mother herself, or that he’s going to end up even more of a fool in front of her, with his inability to act like a normal human being around her.

**Author's Note:**

> A review would be lovely, if you're so inclined.  
> Also I'm evilythedwarf over at tumblr.


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